CARRERA DE TRADUCTOR PÚBLICO - ENTRANCE EXAMINATION - NOVIEMBRE 2020

NOMBRE y APELLIDO: ……………………………………………………………………………………………

Nº de ORDEN: (NO es el DNI)………………………………………………………………………..

The Social Dilemma: a wake-up call for a world drunk on dopamine?

John Naughton

The new Netflix docudrama is a valiant if flawed attempt to address our complacency about
surveillance capitalism

Spool forward a couple of centuries. A small group of social historians drawn from the survivors
of climate catastrophe are picking through the documentary records of what we are currently
pleased to call our civilisation, and they come across a couple of old movies. When they’ve
managed to find a device on which they can view them, it dawns on them that these two films
might provide an insight into a great puzzle: how and why did the prosperous, apparently peaceful
societies of the early 21st century implode?

The two movies are The Social Network, which tells the story of how a po-faced Harvard dropout
named Mark Zuckerberg created a powerful and highly profitable company; and The Social
Dilemma, which is about how the business model of this company – as ruthlessly deployed by its
po-faced founder – turned out to be an existential threat to the democracy that 21st-century
humans once enjoyed.

Both movies are instructive and entertaining, but the second one (which has just been released on
Netflix) leaves one wanting more. Its goal is admirably ambitious: to provide a compelling,
graphic account of what the business model of a handful of companies is doing to us and to our
societies. The intention of the director, Jeff Orlowski, is clear from the outset: to reuse the strategy
deployed in his two previous documentaries on climate change – nicely summarised by one
critic as “bring compelling new insight to a familiar topic while also scaring the absolute shit out
of you”.

For those of us who have for years been trying – without notable success – to spark public concern
about what’s going on in tech, it’s fascinating to watch how a talented movie director goes about
the task. Orlowski adopts a two-track approach. In the first, he assembles a squad of engineers and
executives – people who built the addiction-machines of social media but have now repented – to
talk openly about their feelings of guilt about the harms they inadvertently inflicted on society,
and explain some of the details of their algorithmic perversions.

They are, as you might expect, almost all males of a certain age and type. The writer Maria
Farrell, in a memorable essay, describes them as examples of the prodigal techbro – tech
executives who experience a sort of religious awakening and “suddenly see their former
employers as toxic, and reinvent themselves as experts on taming the tech giants. They were lost
and are now found.”

Orlowski welcomes these techbros with open arms because they suit his purpose – which is to
explain to viewers the terrible things that the surveillance capitalist companies such
as Facebook and Google do to their users. And the problem with that is that when he gets to the
point where we need ideas about how to undo that damage, the boys turn out to be a bit – how
shall I put it – incoherent.

The second expository track in the film – which is interwoven with the documentary strand – is a
fictional account of a perfectly normal American family whose kids are manipulated and ruined by
their addiction to social media. This is Orlowski’s way of persuading non-tech-savvy viewers that
the documentary stuff is not only real, but is inflicting tangible harm on their teenagers. It’s a way
of saying: Pay attention: this stuff really matters!

And it works, up to a point. The fictional strand is necessary because the biggest difficulty facing
critics of an industry that treats users as lab rats is that of explaining to the rats what’s happening
to them while they are continually diverted by the treats (in this case dopamine highs) being
delivered by the smartphones that the experimenters control.

Where the movie fails is in its inability to accurately explain the engine driving this industry that
harnesses applied psychology to exploit human weaknesses and vulnerabilities. A few times it
wheels on Prof Shoshana Zuboff, the scholar who gave this activity a name – “surveillance
capitalism”, a mutant form of our economic system that mines human experience (as logged in our
data trails) in order to produce marketable predictions about what we will do/read/buy/believe
next. Most people seem to have twigged the “surveillance” part of the term, but overlooked the
second word. Which is a pity because the business model of social media is not really a mutant
version of capitalism: it’s just capitalism doing its thing – finding and exploiting resources from
which profit can be extracted. Having looted, plundered and denuded the natural world, it has now
turned to extracting and exploiting what’s inside our heads. And the great mystery is why we
continue to allow it to do so.
PART I (Minimum Passing Mark: 26 points) PAPER 1

1. READING COMPREHENSION
All the correct answers are awarded 2 points each.

For each question below circle the one right option or answer True or False:

1. The author insinuates that our society will have been wiped out by some natural disaster.
2. Which documentary tells us about how our society is threatened by social networks?

a- The Social Network

b- The Social Dilemma
c- None of them
d- Both of them

3. John Naughton describes The Social Dilemma as not coming to viewers’ expectations.
4. According to one critic, Orlowski’s documentary The Social Dilemma has frightened
some people.

5. “Nicely summarised” (3rd paragraph) refers to:

a- the director’s intention

b- the director’s two former documentaries
c- the strategy he used in previous documentaries
d- none of the above
 e- all of the above

6. Who tells us that most tech-savvies are men?

a- John Naughton
b- Orlowski
c- Maria Farrell
d- John Naughton and Maria Farrell
e- all of them
f- none of them

7. Maria Farrell uses the metaphor of the religious awakening to refer to:

a- tech executives’ new insight into social platforms

b- tech executives’ rebellion against former employers
c- tech executives’ need for a change in their lifestyles

8. Naughton criticizes the techbros for their failure to tackle the damage caused by social
networks.

9. The documentary also tells a fictitious story of an American family in order to raise
awareness of the social dilemma among ordinary people.

10. The author of the article is at odds with the notion of surveillance capitalism because it
fails to account for the use of the social media business model.

2. USE OF ENGLISH: PARAPHRASING

All the correct answers are awarded 3 points each.
Use the words in brackets somewhere in the sentence or the given beginnings.
DO NOT change the meaning.

a. Both movies are instructive and entertaining, but the second one leaves one wanting
more. (despite)

………………………………………………………………………………………….

b. Hopefully, knowing the effects of social media on our behaviour might help us decide
what to do with it.

If only……………………………………………………………………………………

c. The moment social media work is connected to other interventions it can become a
powerful tool to foster change.

Only when……………………………………………………………………………….

d. The Social Dilemma explores the effect of smartphones and social networks on human
behavior. Jeff Orlowski directed it. (Use a relative clause to join the sentences.)

……………………………………………………………………………………………
e. Arguing that social platforms are responsible for the fraying of society is easy. (bear)

It is……………………………………………………………………………………….

f. The documentary clearly shows that social platforms can alienate us completely.

What………………………………………………………………………………………

g. Experts think that content posted on Instagram has a longer shelf life than that of other
social networking sites. (to)

Content……………………………………………………………………………………

h. I regret having spent so much time on Facebook.

I wish……………………………………………………………………………………..

i. Right after finishing the documentary, my friend decided to delete her Twitter account.
(sooner)
……………………………………………………………………………………………

j. But for the manipulation of social media, the candidate would have lost the elections.

Had……………………………………………………………………………………….

__________________________________________________________________________
PART II (Minimum Passing Mark 26)

3. ESSAY WRITING (300-320 words)

Write an opinion essay on ONE of the topics below:

(a) The use of social networks should be limited so that people do not become addicted to
them. Do you agree?
(b) Despite the dilemma they pose, social networks have improved our democracies. Do
you agree?

Make sure you include:

- Advanced structures (inversion, conditionals, passive voice, linkers, complex clauses, etc.)
- Relevant vocabulary
- Meaningful and rich ideas
- Well-ordered and cohesive paragraphs

TOTAL …/50

Poor/Inaccurate use of structures requested Spelling mistakes

Poor use of language/grammar Punctuation mistakes
Lack of Cohesion / Coherence Poor contents/ poor ideas
ENTRANCE EXAMINATION NOVEMBER 2020
PART I (Ex 1 + 2) - MINIMUM passing Mark: 26 POINTS

1. Reading comprehension (total 20 points: 2 points each)

1. T
2. B
3. F
4. F
5. C
6. A
7. B
8. F
9. T
10. F

2. Paraphrasing (10 x 3 points each = 30 points) (Suggested answers)

a. Despite both movies being instructive and entertaining, the second one/the latter
leaves one wanting more.
Despite the fact that both movies are instructive and entertaining, the second
one/the latter leaves one wanting more.
b. If only we knew the effects of social media on our behaviour. (That might help us
decide what to do with it).
c. Only when social media work is connected to other interventions can it become a
powerful tool to foster change.
d. The Social Dilemma, (which was) directed by Jeff Orlowski, explores the effect of
smartphones and social networks on human behaviour.

e. It is easy to argue that social platforms bear the responsibility for the fraying of
society.
f. What the documentary shows is that social platforms can alienate us completely.
g. Content posted on Instagram is thought to have a longer shelf life than that of other
social networking sites.
h. I wish I hadn’t spent so much time on Facebook.
i. No sooner had my friend finished the documentary than she decided to delete her
Twitter account. (the linker THAT is incorrect here!)
No sooner had my friend finished the documentary, she decided to delete her Twitter
account
j. Had it not been for the manipulation of social media, the candidate would have
lost the elections.
Had the candidate not manipulated social media, he/she would have lost the
elections.